Many, if not all, human beings have personality or behavior habits which they would like to modify or they have problems which they would like to learn to cope with. Typical of such problems are over consumption of food or alcoholic beverages, poor nutrition, lack of exercise or insufficient good health habits. Others may wish to quit smoking or deal with an unwanted pregnancy or an employment or career problem.
Educators have long recognized that visual aids not only make a presentation, discussion or lecture more enjoyable to the listeners, but additionally aid in conveying an understanding to the listeners and increase retention of information by listeners. However, in dealing with complicated subjects, such as the intellectual concepts involved in describing the human personality, it is particularly difficult to create physical objects which are easily related to the intellectual concepts and yet simple so they can be easily remembered by the listener and easily manipulated by the lecturer.
Experienced teachers recognize that it is considerably easier to teach people the facts about a problem such as alcoholism or poor nutrition, but considerably more difficult to teach them how to modify their behavior so that they act in the correct manner. Motivating people to a desired action requires an individual to examine such things as self image and to recognize an individual's responsibility for his actions. This requires an examination of such things as the positive and negative feelings which people feel about themselves. People must learn to understand the principles which direct human behavior in order to learn how to modify their behavior.
There is, therefore, a need for a motivational teaching aid for personal use or use by counselors, teachers and lecturers which will provide a simple illustration of the intellectual concepts involved in human psychology and which can be physically manipulated and actively used as a tool for teaching these concepts instead of merely hanging passively for observation.